


Heartbreak at the End of the World

by DarylDixonGrimes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: And also some other things, Angst, Daryl processing his heartbreak over Rick, Jesus being a good friend, M/M, There is no romance here, Unrequited Love, but that's the big one, verrry vague hint that Glenn is the one who got Lucilled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 00:16:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6542602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His entire world after the first time he'd thought he lost Merle had revolved around Rick Grimes. He loved the others like family, sure. But when the days got hard, when people he felt responsible for died or got taken, when the entire whole of the universe seemed to be crumbling down around them, Rick was how he pushed through, how he pulled himself back up and made himself keep going. </p>
<p>And now the universe was crumbling again, and this time there was no one."</p>
<p>Or the one where there's a ton of angst and Daryl's got a friend in Jesus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartbreak at the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a hard time writing Rickyl since Richonne went canon, because all I keep thinking about is how Daryl is clearly in love with Rick and must be in pain beyond pain seeing them together. So this is basically me dealing with those feelings, because I realized I'm not going to be able to write any happy Rickyl having phone sex or any other kind of sex unless I get it all out. 
> 
> So basically this a Daryl angst-fest. I have warned you.

Daryl was exhausted. It wasn't your typical end of a long, hard day exhausted; nor was it an end of final exams exhausted. This was something far beyond that. This was a kind of bone-tired heaviness that settled into every nook and cranny of his very being, leaving him with a weighty feeling of gray despair that only the new world could produce. Daryl wasn't just exhausted; he was weary.   
  
If anyone asked, he'd say that it started with Dwight, and he supposed it had even if back then he hadn't quite felt much more than a gentle sting of betrayal. He had been the one responsible for judging new people so many times, and he had honestly thought he saw something in Dwight and his companions, but he had been wrong. Wrong enough that it had cost Denise her life with his own damn crossbow. Wrong enough that the doctor in Hilltop had told him he would probably never be able to raise his right arm above his shoulder ever again.   
  
The problem though was that no one asked. Carol was gone. Denise was dead. Aaron was too busy coming to terms with things the rest of them had long ago. And the only other person truly likely to ask him if he was alright was too busy asking Michonne instead.   
  
And there was probably the real reason that the weight of the world had managed to pin him down without any promise of letting him up again.   
  
He didn't hate her. Shit, how could he? She had done a hell of a lot for their family and for Rick and the kids. So had he, but he was missing the things she had, the things Rick wanted—soft skin, a bright smile, two X chromosomes. He couldn't have competed even if he actually had the social skills to do it, and maybe that was what stung the most while he laid in the recovery bed in Hilltop being brought food and water by people he didn't know and didn't care to know, because what did knowing anyone matter anymore when they were just as likely to die or fall in love with someone else as they were to become important to him?  
  
“How are you doing?”   
  
Daryl barely managed to slide his eyes over to the doctor, whose name he knew but refused to acknowledge. Names meant feeling something for someone, and he just couldn't anymore.   
  
“I'll live,” Daryl said, because he would, despite how much he'd wished lately that he'd been the one to meet Lucille in the woods that night.   
  
“You're strong enough to get out of bed if you want,” the doctor said, and Daryl doubted it, but he nodded anyway, staring up at the ceiling until long after the other man was gone and the shadows had lengthened and filled the room with night.   
  
“Hey there.”   
  
Daryl let his eyes move over to Jesus, the only person in Hilltop he allowed a name, mostly because it was already too late to keep that person from mattering to him or the rest of the group.   
  
“What?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Harlan said you're good to get out of bed. Thought you might want to go out for dinner tonight instead of having it here. Stretch your legs a bit. You can eat with us.”

“I'm good.”   
  
Paul sighed quietly.

“Look, I know that night was rough.”  
  
“You don't know shit.”   
  
“Except I do. The Saviors did the same thing here as they did to you. We all understand what you and Maggie are going through.”   
  
Daryl felt a tiny spark of anger flare up within the gray he'd been dwelling in. The problem wasn't that they couldn't understand what he and the others were going through with Negan. The problem was that they couldn't understand what it meant to love someone who didn't want you, who could never want you because you were born with one set of parts over another.   
  
His entire world after the first time he'd thought he lost Merle had revolved around Rick Grimes. He loved the others like family, sure. But when the days got hard, when people he felt responsible for died or got taken, when the entire whole of the universe seemed to be crumbling down around them, Rick was how he pushed through, how he pulled himself back up and made himself keep going.   
  
And now the universe was crumbling again, and this time there was no one. No one and no chance of there ever being someone. Sometime since the day he'd first met Rick, he'd dared to hope. He'd told himself Rick and Shane were closer than friends. He'd told himself that maybe someday, when Rick'd had time to get over Lori, when they finally had a place that felt like a permanent home, maybe. _Maybe_.   
  
But shit had settled enough for Rick to love again, and he'd made his choice and Daryl was left alone. It was Merle leaving him to rot at home with his asshole father all over again but twelve thousand times worse and more painful. Because he could be angry with Merle back then, but Rick hadn't done a damn thing wrong.    
  
Worst of all, on top of all of that, he felt guilty. Because the brutal loss of one of their own should have been the thing hurting him the most and it wasn't. Instead it was watching Rick pull Carl close with one arm and Michonne close with the other. It was watching him pet her hair even while he stared wide-eyed at the wall of the RV. It was watching him find the will to comfort her in all of the things he was feeling and processing. It was watching the physical embodiment of the other man's choice laid out in front of him in their darkest moment and finally realizing that every daydream he had had about him and Rick was just as dead as they all were inside.   
  
And no one at Hilltop fucking understood that.   
  
“No you don't. Ain't hungry no way.”   
  
“Daryl...”   
  
“Leave me be.” Daryl pulled one arm up onto his chest, the closest thing to crossing them that he could do in his condition.   
  
“You have to eat something.”   
  
“Can eat here.”   
  
“Maggie's already there.”   
  
“Good for her.” No doubt the kind people of Hilltop were comforting and doting on her a lot better than he could.   
  
“If you think any of this is somehow your fault, it's not.”   
  
The spark ignited again. Why couldn't he just shut up and leave him the hell alone?   
  
“Come to dinner. Talk to someone about it. Everyone here understands.”   
  
“No you don't. You can say it all damn night, but you're never gonna get it.”   
  
“You keep saying that. The kid they beat to death was nineteen. His mother's helping make dinner right now. His si-”  
  
“I don't give a shit,” Daryl said, and maybe anger wasn't the best thing to feel after feeling nothing, but damn if he gave a shit about that either. “This ain't about what happened out there with them. Shit sucks, but we're all used to it.”   
  
“Then what is it about? Besides being an asshole, I mean.”   
  
“Screw you. You wouldn't get it. No one would get it.”   
  
“How would you know when you won't let anyone try?”   
  
“What's the point of tryin when all people can do is pat you on the damn shoulder and look at you like you're some pathetic lost puppy dog?”   
  
“I highly doubt there's not at least one person in this whole community who could understand what you're feeling, Daryl. I know every person here. You tell me what's wrong, and I can probably find you someone who would sympathize.”   
  
“Fine. You find me the asshole here who's realized the person they love can never love them back because he ain't playin for the right team, and I'll fuckin talk. Find me the asshole who saw their entire damn world go up in smoke when they watched that person look at someone else like they were the whole goddamn universe, the person who feels like a piece of shit because they can't help but care more about what it means to lose them than the person who died in the woods even though that hurts plenty too. Find me that one if it's so damn easy for someone to _understand_.”   
  
Daryl shifted his weight a little onto his good side and moved his head, turning away from Paul the best he could without irritating his injury. The room fell into a silence around him, so quiet he wasn't sure if Jesus was even still there or not. The man could move around with even less noise than Daryl could, and after a long stretch of nothing, he assumed he was alone and likely to go hungry for the night, not that either thing bothered him much since he was more than used to both.   
  
“You know,” Jesus said, the sound so unexpected that Daryl's body jerked in surprise. “The first time I realized I wasn't what I thought at the time was normal, I was probably thirteen or fourteen. His name was Christopher, and his dad ran a martial arts studio. I guess, in a way, I owe him. I probably wouldn't be alive right now if I hadn't started taking classes just to watch him do spinkicks.”   
  
Daryl didn't answer.  
  
“I went to classes religiously all through high school. I thought if I could somehow become good enough, if I got enough belts and won enough competitions, that maybe he'd notice me the way I'd noticed him.”   
  
Daryl glanced back at Jesus over his sore shoulder, searching him for lies and finding none.   
  
“I wasn't. Good enough, I mean. We became friends. I got better than him and did the completely healthy thing and downplayed how good I was so that I wouldn't get moved up to the next class where I wouldn't get to see him and spar with him. I let him win a lot, helped him with his homework, anything he needed or wanted that I could give him. But he still went to homecoming with Jessica Thompson. He stayed with her after that. And I finally realized that it wasn't going to happen, not ever, not because of some high school fling, but because Chris could never want me the way I wanted him.”   
  
Daryl shifted, turning back over onto his back. He looked Jesus in the eyes once and looked away.   
  
“He wasn't the only straight boy I ever fell in love with. So I might not completely get what you're going through, Daryl, but I do understand that.”   
  
“Ridiculous,” Daryl said softly, all of his anger gone, the grayness replaced by something in his chest that felt even more crushing.   
  
“What's ridiculous?”  
  
“Lived this damn long, and this is my first time havin my heart broken.” Daryl pulled his hand to his mouth, gnawing at the skin of his thumb. “Always hurt this damn much?”   
  
Jesus nodded.   
  
“At first. And it always feels like your chest will never stop aching, but it does. Just like a cut, it scabs and heals and leaves scars that only bother you when you see them.”   
  
“I'd rather have the cut. Hell, I'd take getting shot in the other shoulder if it'd make this shit stop.”   
  
“I know,” Paul said. “There is one positive thing about it though.”   
  
“Hmm?”   
  
“When you fall in love with someone who can't love you back, you don't have to worry that there's something wrong with you.”   
  
“Plenty wrong with me,” Daryl said.   
  
“You're missing the point of the time-honored heartbreak tradition of deluding yourself until you feel better, Daryl.”   
  
“Guess so. Any other traditions?”   
  
“Ice cream and chocolate, but I think we're out of luck on those.”   
  
Daryl nodded and huffed through his nose in response. The room fell quiet again, a more comfortable silence than the one that Daryl had been dwelling in over the course of his stay. He looked back up at Paul, who offered him a kind, gentle smile, more understanding than pity.   
  
“Can I ask you somethin?”   
  
“Sure,” Paul said.   
  
“Not that I'd… But would you…? I mean if...” Daryl paused, playing with a fray in the blanket spread over his stomach. "Never mind."   
  
Jesus raised his eyebrow.   
  
“I didn't quite understand the question.”   
  
Daryl sighed.   
  
“It's just, not that I want you to, but if… I mean if the world were different and… Hypothetically and shit. Hell, I don't know.”   
  
“Are you trying to ask me if you're datable, Daryl?”   
  
“Don't worry about it,” Daryl said, his cheeks already feeling warmer than they had since that day he'd watched Rick sing along to his crappy music in the car and thought about how much he'd like to just lean over and put his head in the other man's lap. His heart throbbed now even thinking about it.   
  
“No, it's okay. It's normal to want reassurance.”   
  
“Stupid though. You don't even know me that well. Be better off asking Aaron when I get home.”   
  
“I know you well enough to tell you that you are. From the things I've seen and heard about you, you're loyal, strong, brave, you can throw a hell of a punch, you're funny, and a lot smarter than you seem. Not bad looking either.”   
  
Daryl shook his head at that last part. He was uglier than a pile of rocks according to what anyone had ever told him, but he appreciated the sentiment anyway.   
  
“Well, shit. Feel bad now for only thinkin that you're an asshole with nice eyes.”   
  
Jesus laughed.   
  
“This is about the truck, isn't it?”   
  
“Always about the damn truck, Paul. Find us some diving equipment when you're out there runnin around and swipin people's keys, and maybe I'll forgive you.”   
  
“I do keep meaning to tell you guys that I was the one who loaded that truck up in the first place.”

“You're full of shit.”  
  
“Nope. I'd been working on it for a few days. You think all that stuff was just conveniently loaded up in a truck just waiting for you two to find it?"   
  
Daryl squinted at him. As far as he could tell, Jesus was telling the truth.  
  
“Yeah, well, finders keepers.”   
  
Paul quirked his mouth at him and rolled his eyes, letting a little more comfortable silence settle into the space around them before he broke it again.   
  
“Listen, I know you probably don't want to eat in a room full of people right now, but how about you take a walk with me? I'll go get Maggie, and the three of us can eat in my home instead. She needs someone she knows right now, and staying in that bed without moving isn't good for you.”   
  
Daryl looked down toward his bare feet, chewing on the inside of his bottom lip while he thought it over.   
  
“Between you and me, I might even have some chocolate hidden away.”   
  
Daryl looked back up at Jesus and his benevolent smile. And for the first time since he'd found out about Rick and Michonne, he felt a different kind of hope blooming. The hope that he could come through all of this someday and still have some kind of will to live left in him when it was done. It wouldn't be anytime soon, but it at least seemed possible.   
  
He sighed and conceded his defeat, offering up his good hand for Jesus to take.    
  
“Fine, you win. Now help me up, asshole.”   
  



End file.
